Here are my two main reasons, which I'll expand on when I have the time:
1. Television market. Right now, Seattle has a decent chance at being succesful over the long term because they have a monopoly over a mid to larger sized television market. If you split that market with Portland, the Mariners would be left with a much smaller tv market, lessening their revenues drastically, and putting both the Mariners and the Portland MLB team in Milwaukee land.
2. No one seems to want to argue for a Mexican based MLB team. There have been two teams founded in Canada, and there have been some MLB road games played in Latin America. From a strickly economic point of view, putting a team in say Monterrey, Mexico makes sense. Three million people, highest quality of life of any major Mexican City, and close to other MLB markets.
2 comments:
It seems that both the Blazers and Sonics do well. Portlanders are Mariners fans because there is no Portland team. I grew up in Portland, and can say that we wanted our own baseball team all along. I will say that had we had our own team, I would have missed out on being a Griffey fan. I think the teams could co-exist nicely, and PNW fans could root for both. They would be in different leagues and would mostly only meet in the world series, with the exception of inter-league play.
I think people choosing to root for both teams is different than them being able to make money or compete at a high enough level to win consistently. Not many people are going to be fans of two losing teams. Chicago is different because of the history.
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